bloodlust
by a cluster of stars
Summary: or, how enobaria earned her fangs. / seventy-five fragments of her life.
1. i

**i.**

Sometimes, when she closes her eyes, she thinks she can remember her first few moments in Panem. Her first blurry glimpse of the world. The dismal, grey room. The red-stained sheets on the almost-white bed. The sounds of talking and the steady downpour of rain and the tall woman who pulled her away from her mother because bonding is weakness and weakness is failure and failure is banned and—

—and then she opens her eyes again because really, she doesn't want to remember that at all.


	2. ii

**ii.**

She's been watching the screen for a month now—the flat screen with the pictures on the wall. She's not exactly sure what's happening; she can see the children, but she's not sure why the patches of red appear when one of them lies down. It's not had any children on it for a while, though, only shots of one boy, wearing a crown made of gold and silver and bronze. Sometimes it cuts to the crowds of neon-skinned people, cheering, waving flags, chanting his name.

The room seems dark when she looks away. Her mother's still watching, with wide eyes and parted lips. Her father's leaning towards the screen, centimetres away.

 _Some day,_ Enobaria thinks, turning back to the neon colours and bright lights and laughing boys, _some day, that will be me._


	3. iii

**iii.**

Her mother's brought people round—her friends, apparently, the tall man and the beautiful woman and their little girl. Maybe that's the truth. Maybe it's got nothing to do with Enobaria, and how she's six years old but has no friends at school because her smiles are as fake as their imaginary games. Maybe.

This girl isn't in her school. While the adults talk about meaningless things (like weather and quarries and buildings) she stares at Enobaria, brown eyes sharp.

"What's your name?"

Enobaria jumps. "Me?"

The girl laughs, a high, brittle sound. "Yes, _stupid._ " There's a pause. "I'm Ira."

"Enobaria."

"That's a stupid name." There's another pause, and then: "Do you want to be friends?"


	4. iv

**iv.**

Her little brother's born on her eighth birthday. He's small, and fragile, and has the darkest eyes Enobaria's ever seen, and she _hates_ him, because her parents stare at him like he's the sun and she's just a _star_. She tells Ira this, later, when they meet in the quarry after sundown.

"Am I a bad person?"

Ira laughs, and it sounds like glass breaking. "No."

"But . . ."

Ira turns to her, nine-year-old eyes gleaming with something vicious, something _dangerous._ "You want them to notice you?"

She nods, fingers digging patterns in the dust.

"Tell me, Enobaria. Have you ever heard of the Academy?"


	5. v

**v.**

Her parents said yes, like Ira said they would. They let her go to the assessment—to make she's strong enough to start the training—on her own. But now that Enobaria's actually there, almost-naked in a grey room being stared at by a stranger, she's not sure.

The woman in front of her is tall and golden-haired and doesn't even bother asking why she's not accompanied by her parents but by a nine-year-old girl who's waiting in the corridor for her own turn. She thinks she can remember her from the screen at home, but she's not sure, because this woman is completely devoid of emotion and she's a woman, anyway, not a girl. For the first time, Enobaria feels doubt. Does she, after all, want to do this?

The woman steps back and nods. "Name?"

"Enobaria Vexton."

"Reason for joining the Academy?"

 _Neon colours and bright lights and laughing boys and her parents staring at Camidius instead of_ _ **her**_ _._

She stands a little straighter in her worn vest and underwear. "To make my District proud."

The woman stares at her, blue eyes flat. "Good enough. You're in."


	6. vi

**vi.**

Enobaria joins on her ninth birthday; They shave off her hair and dress her in black and tie a white thread around her wrist.

(The blonde woman tells her that when she gets older, when she proves herself, she'll get another, and another, until she has ten and can put herself in to be chosen for the Games.)

And then the training starts; from six in the morning to ten at night, weightlifting and running and climbing, until she's so tired she wants to _die_ because she didn't sign up for this, not _this_ , did she?

(The blonde woman frowns and shows her the form—'I, the undersigned, do agree to train until the age of eighteen, or Victory, or death, whichever comes the first, and if I no longer wish to take part then I agree to whatever punishment District Two wishes to inflict on me or my family— ** _Enobaria Vexton_**.')


	7. vii

**vii.**

She gets her second white thread the day after her first fight, where she walked out with three broken ribs (but the other girl didn't walk out at all). Her mother looks at her, then, really looks, for the first time (it seems) since Camidius was born, and for a second Enobaria holds her breath, because her mother must realize that she's just as good as a boy now, right?

Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn't. Camidius starts screaming before she can say anything, and by the time she's calmed him Enobaria's vanished, teeth gritted, ribs hurting, to go to the Academy.


	8. viii

**viii.**

They give her a choice:

Does she want to learn to throw knives, or throw a spear, or shoot a bow?

She stares into the corner, where a girl of fourteen-or-fifteen is lifting a silver sword almost as big as her above her head, twisting it, throwing it into a mannequin with as little effort as it would take for Enobaria needs to throw a feather.

She points./p

" _That._ "


	9. ix

**ix.**

Cleopatra comes home when she's twelve. She knows Cleopatra from the Academy—she's built like an ox, with standing-out veins and more scars than skin. Ira-and-her had laughed at her more than once, at her blind eye and short hair and ugly, blotched skin.

(She strangled eight tributes. Enobaria won't be laughing again.)

They paint the streets with colour, reds and golds and whites, splotches of colour that stand in stark contrast to the beige of the walls. They string rainbow ribbons throughout the Academy, around the door-handles and windows and sword-stands. They scrawl her name in chalk on the walls; _Cleopatra, Cleopatra, Cleopatra._

And it's all so _beautiful_.


	10. x

**x.**

Ira dances up to her with five threads around her wrist—five tangled threads that look grimy against her pale skin. Enobaria hasn't seen her for a while—has been too busy with sparring and climbing and watching the fourteen-year-old Scarus Magna from across the hall, even though she's really, _really_ not meant to do that.

I'm getting a partner," Ira tells her, red-brown hair glinting in the fluorescent light, "Brutus told me. A _Training_ one." She laughs, and for once Enobaria sees her as a kid—a thirteen-year-old girl like her. It's why she grits her teeth (it hurts) and smiles and murmurs encouragement, when all the time she's holding her four-thread wrist and is thinking, _but why can't it be_ me _?_


	11. xi

**xi.**

Her partner's not Scarus, no matter how much she wanted it to be. He's a skinny wretch like her, and she'd laugh at him if she hadn't seen him with the knives—give him three knives and four dummies are dismembered.

He nods when he meets her, eyes dull as they meet hers. "Hey," he says. "I'm Albus."

"I'm-"

"Honestly," he interrupts, "I couldn't care less."


End file.
